What could be more fun for a 14-year-old boy than messing about in the woods with a gun? My school’s Combined Cadet Force offered precisely that, marching us through the Brecon Beacons and organising mock skirmishes with SA80 rifles (albeit using blanks). When we weren’t trying to shoot each other, we were fighting over OS maps and compasses, trying to find which bit of woodland we were supposed to be sleeping in. One group found a dead body on the side of a Welsh mountain. Another spent an evening drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes with a strange man in a caravan. At some point in the small hours, he got a little too handsy and they all ran back to their bivvies. I was hugely envious when they told us this as we ate powdered eggs, cooked in a mess tin over burning hexamine tablets.
If Britain is going to rearm and meet our Nato commitments, we’re going to need to encourage people to enlist
CCF is a staple for a certain kind of school, the kind that takes both discipline and fun seriously. Normally the schools hire a retired non-commissioned officer to come in one day a week and bark orders at teenagers, making sure they’ve polished their boots or encouraging them to muck about with serious military kit. I remember one summer evening when an anti-submarine Sea King helicopter landed in the school grounds. From my bedroom window I could see some kind of attaché in a spiffy white hat hopping out, saluting our proctor and marching off towards the main mansion house. I ran down to join a gaggle of boys inspecting this vast machine and the pilot showed us the cockpit with its array of switches, lights and cables.
But last year Labour cut funding to 230 state schools that paid for CCF staff. These people weren’t getting very much anyway, about £75 a day to maintain armouries and organise weekend trips, and the savings amount to only around £1.1 million a year.
It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a strategy here. Firstly, because it goes against the stated aims of the Ministry of Defence’s integrated defence review, which argued for a 30 per cent growth in the number of cadets by 2030. If Britain is going to rearm and meet our Nato commitments, we’re going to need to encourage people to enlist. What better way to achieve that than offering teenagers a bit of army lite? Yet cadet headcount is down slightly since the cut.
There are other reasons why this is a bad decision. CCF tends to be something private schools are more keen on than the state sector. Of the cadet forces across the country, 221 are in private schools while 268 are in state schools. Yet only 6 per cent of British children go private. A Labour government, supposedly keen on promoting opportunities for the many rather than the few, has instead cut the most obvious route of entry into the military. Perhaps it doesn’t sit well with Labour’s pacifist tradition. But children who go through CCF are four times more likely to end up as officers and tend to spend an average of six years longer in the service. Why stop a route to a good, stable career?
Cadets can do wonders for a certain kind of child. A recent report by the University of Northampton tells the story of Jamie, a Year Ten pupil in Northern Ireland. Jamie has ADHD and learning difficulties and had been excluded from sports and other extracurricular activities because of his behaviour. CCF was different, though. ‘He quickly understood the rules,’ explains the report. ‘He gets no preferential treatment [and] is not treated as a kid with a label in the CCF.’ The staff gave him boundaries and encouraged him, just like they did any other normal cadet, and he has now passed his weapons handling test. ‘This is the first test he has ever passed.’ The effect in school has been noticeable. Teachers explained that he now behaves well, stands still, listens and follows instructions.
Jamie is not alone. Some 78 per cent of headteachers say CCF improves the behaviour of students. Another school in Northern Ireland brought in a policy where children facing exclusion were told they could stay in school if they signed up for a month of CCF. One in four of the students stayed in education as a result. Given that exclusion often leads to poor employment and sometimes even prison, that £75 per school per day saving seems like a false economy.
Labour argues that much of the CCF funding remains and in November announced a review into cadets. No deadline was given for when it will finally report and little has been heard of the review since. It seems when a policy area confounds Labour, they tend to bury it in procedure. Which is a shame really, because CCF is good for recruitment and good for children like Jamie, too.
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